Recurrent, most recently Romantic, ideologies conceptualize creativity as the solitary, ex nihilo creation of products of self-evident and universal value-most emblematically in the field of art-by highly exceptional individuals. Such ideologies obscure the social dimensions of creativity that come into view via anthropological analysis: (a) the nature and ubiquity of creative processes as communicative and improvisational events, with real-time emergent properties, involving human and nonhuman agents in the context of pre-existing yet malleable genres and constraints; (b) the role of socialization in the making of creative individuals, implicating processes of social reproduction; and (c) the processes by which certain objects and individuals are recognized and constructed as exemplars of creativity and thus acquire their value. This review discusses these dimensions by synthesizing cultural and linguistic/semiotic anthropological research. It concludes by addressing the recent transformation of creativity into the neoliberal philosopher's stone and the potential contribution of anthropology to the demystification of this transformation. 397 Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2014.43:397-412. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org Access provided by University of Reading on 12/29/14. For personal use only.
Existing anthropological accounts have tended to portray the normative ideal of the modern subject as predicated on the demand that the materiality of semiotic forms such as the body and words be subordinate to the subject's interiority as a condition of possibility for his or her freedom and moral autonomy. In this article, I seek to contribute to the ongoing and fruitful conversation in anthropology over the idea of the modern subject by highlighting the distinguishing features of a specifically modern normative ideal of creative agency in which the materiality of semiotic forms is fully incorporated into the architecture of the self and is seen as a condition of possibility for its articulation. This norm is epitomized in the notion of self‐expression that has emerged from Sentimentalism and Romanticism. In doing so, I draw on fieldwork I conducted in creative writing workshops in Israel and U.S. postsecondary jazz education, as well as on U.S. self‐help literature. I argue that this normative ideal of modern creative agency qualifies the assumption that modernity has been predicated mostly on the desire to keep nature and culture ontologically distinct. I conclude the article by exploring this normative ideal as it resurfaces in the present historical moment in modern subjects’ attempts to orient themselves under conditions of neoliberal uncertainty, open‐endedness, and potential creativity.
In this article, I seek to contribute to the anthropology of embodied practice by asking, what would embodied practical mastery that mandates constant differentiation look like, and what would be its cultural and social determinants? In doing so, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork I conducted in a postsecondary jazz school in the United States. Through an exploration of how jazz educators cope with the paradoxical task of training the body and liberating it, I inquire into the challenge of negotiating the tension between the two key modernist ideas of rationalized schooling and Romantic creativity in contemporary institutional contexts.
Scholars of cultural evolution and change have tended to conceptualize innovation as a process that results from individual experimentation involving random or very loosely guided trial-and-error alterations to existing cultural elements. Alternatively, they have focused on individual experimentation via decision rules and different heuristics with already existing, potentially innovative cultural elements whose emergence is left unexplained. Based on ethnographic fieldwork I conducted with a number of business innovation consultancy groups in the United States, I theorize institutionalized innovation as a new engine of cultural evolution that might be unique to complex industrial societies characterized by intense intragroup competition that puts pressure on constant innovation. This engine might be responsible for a faster pace of cultural evolution. At stake is a systematic strategy of purposeful innovation that is neither entirely random nor entirely calculation based. Rather, it is based in the rationalized and rule-governed production of what I call "structured contingency," and it is capable of being applied to products and services across different business domains, including to itself. [innovation, cultural evolution, business anthropology, bricolage, economic anthropology, United States] RESUMEN Investigadores de cambio y evolución cultural han tendido a conceptualizar innovación como un proceso que resulta de la experimentación individual envolviendo alteraciones al azar o relajadamente guiadas de ensayo y error a elementos culturales existentes. Alternativamente, se han concentrado en experimentación individual vía reglas de decisión y heurística diferente con ya existentes, potencialmente innovativos elementos culturales cuya emergencia es dejada sin explicar. Basado en un trabajo de campo etnográfico que conduje con un número de grupos de consultoría de innovación en negocios en los Estados Unidos, teorizo la innovación institucionalizada como un nuevo motor de evolución cultural que puede serúnico a sociedades industriales complejas caracterizadas por intensa competencia entre grupos que pone presión en innovación constante. Este motor puede ser responsable por un ritmo más rápido de evolución cultural. En juego está una estrategia sistemática de innovación con un propósito que no es enteramente al azar ni enteradamente basada en cálculo. En cambio, está basada en la producción racionalizada y gobernada por reglas de lo que llamo "contingencia estructurada", y es capaz de ser aplicada a productos y servicios a través de diferentes dominios de negocios incluyéndoseél mismo. [innovación, evolución cultural, antropología de negocios, bricolaje, antropología económica, Estados Unidos]
This article argues that contemporary, computer-mediated, algorithmic forms of sociality problematize a long and major tradition in cultural anthropology, which has appropriated the notion of artistic style to theorize culture as a relatively distinct, coherent, and durable configuration of behavioral dispositions. The article's ethnographic site is a lab in a major institute of technology in the United States, in which computer scientists develop computerized algorithms that are able to simulate the improvisation styles of past jazz masters and mix them with one another to create new styles of improvisation. The article argues that the technology that allows the scientists to simulate and mix styles is playing an increasingly important role in mediating contemporary forms of sociality over the Internet and that the anthropological tradition that has theorized culture as artistic style has to be reconfigured to account for the dynamic nature of these contemporary forms of sociality not as styles but as styles of styling styles.
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